Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Wednesday, January 23
Dead slow at the hotel this morning…I didn’t see anybody from the time Mark left at 2300 until 0315 when just like that there were three people in the lobby demanding attention…I don’t understand this, either…For three hours it’s as if you’re working in the Gobi Desert and then BOOM it’s Grand Central Station…It is one of the eternal Wonders of the Front Desk…I’d gotten my work done around 0015 and for the past three hours I’d been working on projects for when the bell that I keep on the front desk rings…Three people…Two want to buy sundry items (some water, a sports drink, and some power bars) and another guy is looking for a room.

I take of the sundry sales first, then get the gentleman a room…He and a buddy had driven down from North Dakota with no particular plans and 0315 seemed like a good time to call it a day…Let me tell you something, if you end up here and you came from North Dakota you took some back roads because there is not convenient interstate access to this town…As it was I did have a room for him, $159 plus tax, two queen beds and I even granted their request for a 1200 checkout, an hour later than normal…Usually, late checkouts are reserved for rewards club members, but you learn in the night audit racket that you can’t be afraid to wield your authority when needed. 

I don’t know about road trips with no particular plans…I do enjoy road trips, or did, I don’t take too many of them anymore, but you have to have a plan…If you’re don’t, you are merely wandering around aimlessly, which ol’ Sparrow has never particularly enjoyed.

I got some kitty litter while I was visiting The Wife at the retailer after work…For years we used the kind that comes in the big yellow tub…The cat seemed to enjoy it, but a month ago or so, for reasons I’m sure she thought good, The Wife changed to a different brand where the litter came in four pre-measured packages…These weren’t very practical at all…One, they made way bigger clumps than the old litter…This meant when you cleaned the box more litter was taken out – there were even bare spots, which could not have been good for the cat’s morale – and you couldn’t pour more in without opening a new package, which seems to defeat the purpose of the package system…So in a rare overruling of The Wife, I went back to the old litter, throwing the old stuff out and replacing it with the new stuff.

Once again, I didn’t stop by the house on the way to the Mexican joint in the next county for what is turning out to be a fairly regular Wednesday brunch…One, there was snow coming in and while I can certainly drive in the snow, I don’t want to bother with it crossing county lines to go eat…Two, if I did go home first I’d probably get comfy and end up not wanting to leave the house because comfort at home is about the only that trumps going to the Mexican joint in the next county.

Plus I needed gas…The convenience store in town, recall, is having problems with their storage tanks and are only selling premium and diesel, not the mid-grade stuff we use and I’d rather not give money to the locally owned co-op if I can at all avoid it because they are the ones who misquoted the price on an oil change and didn’t honor the quoted price.  

There is seldom anyone at the Mexican joint at 0830 on Wednesday…Not only that, because I am refreshingly unopen to new things and get the same crap every time, the new girl working the counter has no trouble remembering my usual, even tho I hadn’t been there for a couple of weeks, tho the price has gone up a couple of bucks…The convenience store is on the right as you’re heading out of town, so I got gas last, before heading out of town. 

My goal with my exciting new schedule has been to stay up until late afternoon or so on Wednesdays before retiring for the night, but once again I couldn’t make it that far…I got home from the next county and after giving the cat her canned yummy ration and changing the litter I settled in to work on my projects but I started nodding off before noon.

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1230 Wednesday until 1830 Wednesday…6.0 hours, 26 for the week…I am a complete loser…Not only can I not stay up past noon on Wednesdays, but my patented 15-18 hour sleep marathons appear to be a thing of the past, too…Sigh…It’s always something in this world.

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.

It was inspired by the 19th century British novel of the same name.

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